An Ontario (S. Calif.) police dispatcher who allegedly received sex-related text messages sent by an OPD officer using his city-issued pager is a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Dispatcher April Florio was the girlfriend of officer Jeff Quon in 2003 when an audit of pager messages revealed the explicit messages, and that Quon had frequently gone over the message limit for the city’s pager account. Quon sent messages to Florio, his estranged—a former OPD dispatcher—and to an OPD sergeant, according to the federal lawsuit that claims the city had no right to read the pager messages. In 2007 a jury sided with the city’s contention that the pager and account belonged to them, that Quon had signed the city’s electronic device policy, and that they had the right to examine the account and messages. But a U.S. District court reversed the jury’s decision in 2007. The city appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that court heard oral arguments on the case last week. The decision, expected this fall, is expected to set an important precedent on workplace privacy, especially involving company-owned cellular phones, pagers and Internet-connected devices. The court’s decision could apply not only to the privacy of the senders of messages, but also to the receivers. Read more about the details of the lawsuit here.
Update: On June 17, 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower court, saying that it was reasonable for the city to search the sergant’s text messages and did not violate his Fourth Amendment rights. Download (pdf) the court’s opinion here.
According to court documents filed by the city with the Supreme Court appeal, “This case has its genesis in gross malfeasance which, no one disputes, took place in the Ontario Police Department’s dispatch center in the early part of this decade.”
Dispatcher Sally Bors was under investigation in September 2002, “for providing information to her boyfriend Mark Timbrell, who was a member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, regarding police investigative activity about the Hell’s Angels in general and Timbrell in particular,” the documents state.
A police sting operation was performed to ferret out corruption in September 2002. A narcotics officer called in the license plate of a known Hell’s Angels member to Bors. “Rather than contacting the Hell’s Angels member directly, Bors used her pager to text message another dispatcher, Angela Santos, requesting that she contact the Hell’s Angels member and let him know he was being followed by a narcotics agent,” the court document states.
“After doing so, Santos immediately contacted yet another dispatcher, April Florio, and informed her of what she had done for Bors. Florio then contacted fellow dispatcher Doreen Klein about Bors/Santos’ activities. Neither Florio nor Klein reported this malfeasance to any personnel, supervisory or otherwise, in the police department.
When Klein and Florio arrived at the dispatch center the following day, they were asked to report to their supervisor’s office for questioning about the incident. “When they arrived in the supervisor’s office, internal affairs Sergeant Deborah Glenn asked them to hand over their personal cell phones and pagers before the questioning would commence.” Two weeks earlier the department had issued a memorandum to dispatchers that, “[e]ffective immediately and until further notice, use of all cell phones and pagers within the Dispatch Center will be prohibited. On duty personnel shall leave pagers and cell phones in their lockers and check them on their breaks.”
The pagers and cell phones were kept on a table in an interrogation room where Florio and Klein were separately interviewed by internal affairs personnel, so the two could not covertly communicating with one another and “coordinate their stories.”
The pagers were returned to the two after the interrogation, the city says, but Florio and Klein later alleged that a sergeant had examined and read information on their cell phones and pagers, including text messages, names, phone numbers, and street addresses.
During those interviews, Klein and Florio “played dumb” about the malfeasance in the comm center, according to the city’s account in the court documents.
“When Santos was interviewed, however, she confessed to her involvement, informing internal affairs personnel that, at the behest of Bors, she had contacted a Hell’s Angels member and advised him that he was being followed by police, and that she also relayed that information to Florio,” the document states.
Florio and Klein were re-interviewed the next day by internal affairs. “Only when confronted with Santos’ confession did each in turn acknowledge that they too were aware that Santos had contacted a Hell’s Angels member to inform him that he was being followed by the police,” the city states in the court filing.
Based on these admissions, Klein and Florio were later fired.
The city then explains, “In the midst of these developments, a separate event took place that would later become embroiled in the dispatch center investigation. The event involved the department’s audit of the text messages sent to and sent from police sergeant Jeff Quon’s city-issued pager.”
That investigation revealed the sexually-related messages and the over-limit charges. According to court documents, one message to Florio read, “i was hoping u could sneak over and spend some time with me? r u mad at me? i really do miss your tight [rear].” Florio texted back, We have so much fun don’t we?”
Interestingly, after she was fired, Florio filed a lawsuit against the city, objecting to a union agreement that members would pay one-half the cost of an appeal hearing officer. A state court agreed with Florio and ordered the city to pay the her $3,290 share of the hearing officer expenses.
The current lawsuit came about in a strange way. After the pager investigation, Quon’s wife Jerilyn applied for a police officer position with the Upland Police Department. She believed she did well on the testing and interview, and would be hired. But when another person was offered the job instead, Jerilyn Quon doubted the UPD chief’s explanation. The court documents state, “Instead, she became convinced that the reason she was turned down for the position was because (the UPD chief) called (the OPD chief) and informed him that Jerilyn was suing him in the instant matter for the divulgence of the text messages from her husband’s pager.”
At that point, the Quons filed a lawsuit against Arch Wireless, the city, OPD chief and other, claiming the pager messages had been improperly reviewed.
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